Braun: For aging veterans, a push for Memorial Day tradition and the fall of the red, silk poppy

Jennifer Brown/The Star-LedgerMembers of Post 91 of the Polish Legion of American Veterans attend a mass at Saint Hedwig R.C. Church dedicated to Elizabeth Post 91 of the Polish Legion of American Veterans.

LINDEN — It’s not getting any easier for these men, for lots of reasons. The youngest is 77. The oldest, 94. Yet the leaders and active members of Post 91 of the Polish Legion of American Veterans in Linden still head out to supermarkets and shopping centers to offer their artificial poppies in exchange for a donation.

"But now we have to explain what we’re doing,’’ says Henry "Red" Nadolski of Elizabeth. He’s 79. "We have to explain what poppies are. Sometimes, we even have to explain who veterans are. How can people not know who veterans are?’’

Veterans with their bunches of red silk flowers were once a nearly ubiquitous sight on New Jersey’s city street corners as May slid into Memorial Day. They’d wear their campaign hats and ask for donations to help veterans and then give the artificial flowers away as a sign of thanks. The expectation was the donors would wear the flowers on their clothing or hang them on car rear-view mirrors over the dashboards.

"It’s getting harder and harder,’’ says Joe Wojcik of Rahway. He’s the post’s commander, a veteran of both Korea and Vietnam, a member of other veterans’ organizations that also use the poppy to raise money for funds dedicated to helping fellow veterans, especially those in hospitals.

Harder because there are fewer active veterans who can do it. At the post hall on Grier Avenue, the shiny gold plaque that memorializes deceased members lists more than 300 names, three times the number of living members the post has now.

"We just can’t get new members to join up,’’ says Wojcik.

That’s true of all veterans organizations. In the last year, the Internal Revenue Service listed more than 4,400 local veterans’ groups nationally that lost their tax-exempt status for failing to file reports in the last three years, a good measure of how many posts closed. More than 120 of them were in New Jersey—those belonging to the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Vietnam Veterans of America, Jewish War Veterans, Catholic War Veterans.

The problem is especially acute in cities where immigrant populations unfamiliar with traditions that date back to the 1920s are dominant. That doesn’t mean their young men and women are not in the military. An outside wall of Wojcik’s post bears a mural depicting Union County veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and many of the names are Hispanic.

There’s often a mismatch between the needs of older veterans and younger men and women who resist recruitment. For example, Wojcik’s post holds meetings during the day because most of its members are too old to drive at night. Younger vets often spend their days working or looking for work.

Some towns and businesses now put restrictions on veterans soliciting donations and handing out poppies. Permits from town hall or written permission from a supermarket—maybe both.

"Some of our members complained about that,’’ says John Kinney, the finance officer of Post 91, "but it’s a good thing, really.’'

A good thing because legitimate veterans’ organizations discovered that, around Memorial Day, some sleazes were raising money by pretending to be veterans.

"I saw this guy drive up in a car with New York plates and start holding out a coffee can asking for donations," says Wojcik. "Then I see him reach into the can and take out some money and buy a pack of cigarettes. You can’t do that. All the money, every dime, is supposed to go to help veterans.’’

Jennifer Brown/The Star-LedgerMembers of the Elizabeth Post 91 of the Polish Legion of American Veterans form a procession at the start of mass at Saint Hedwig R.C. Church. The aging group of veterans are doing their best to keep up Memorial Day traditions.

Then there’s just plain loss of historical memory. World War 1 vets are gone, and so are many of those from World War 2—Post 91 has only two left and one of them, Stanley Gorsky, is 94, active as the sergeant-at-arms. Korean War veterans are in their 70s or older; Vietnam, in their 60s. It’s unlikely many school children are still taught "In Flander’s Fields," the poem that inspired the use of what’s called here the "Memorial Poppy"—in Commonwealth nations, it’s called a "Remembrance Poppy"--as a symbol of the human cost of war.

But veterans like those from Post 91 say they’ll continue to raise money as long they can because all of it goes to their comrades, mostly those who are patients in institutions in Lyons, East Orange, and Menlo Park.

"We get a wish list from these places,’’ says Kinney, "and all the money from the poppies goes to fulfilling those wishes. The best we can.’’